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Bread

Virginia Egg-bread

A moist cornmeal bread made with milk, eggs, butter, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Virginia Egg-bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the cornmeal and add the butter.

  3. Separate the eggs and beat the whites until light.

  4. Once the mixture has cooled, add the beaten eggs, baking powder, and salt.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the main structure of the bread as the batter sets when baked.
Eggs
Beaten whites trap air that lightens the batter and help bind it.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing it to rise and become lighter in the oven.
Milk
Provides moisture and hydrates the cornmeal so the batter becomes spreadable.
Butter
Adds fat, which softens the crumb and contributes to flavour and browning.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the beaten eggs and baking powder. If the cornmeal mixture is still very hot, the beaten egg whites can deflate and lose the air that lightens the bread. Heat also speeds up the baking powder's reaction, so it can release gas before the bread is in the oven and lose its lift.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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